


Scars That Linger

by Iverna



Series: Camelot Renaissance [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Captain Swan - Freeform, F/M, No one actually gets hurt, and a vaguely hurt/comfort type situation, except killian's feelings, mention of sexy times, sorry killian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 07:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14732982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iverna/pseuds/Iverna
Summary: A little bit set in Camelot, in which some members of the court bring up old insecurities for Killian, and Emma finds a way to reassure him. AU in that Emma is not the Dark One.





	Scars That Linger

The Camelot court, Emma finds out very quickly, is a snake pit. On the surface, they all accept and welcome her, the crown princess of Misthaven. But there are comments—witty, quick, subtle comments that Emma barely notices at first. Barbs disguised as friendly jokes. Innocuous remarks that are just another weapon in the constant jostling for position and power.

Her mother, despite her sweet nature, handles them like a pro. Emma, who did not grow up learning about diplomacy and rhetoric, feels like she’s been thrown into the deep end.

She’s not a fairytale princess. She didn’t grow up at court, learning diplomacy and etiquette and how to weaponise a smile. She has a kid, and a pirate boyfriend, and no idea which fork to use first.

She makes it through the dinners by copying her mother and following Killian’s occasional muttered instructions—because of course _he_ knows the proper etiquette.

“They were big on etiquette in the Royal Navy,” he tells her, with a wry smile. “I had to memorise the rule book.”

“There was a rule book?” she asks, part of her just as glad that she never had to bother with anything like that—even if it would probably help her feel a little more at ease around here.

“Oh, aye,” he says. “And an officer must know it by heart, cover to cover. Though I’ll admit that I no longer do. It’ll be the smaller spoon now, incidentally.”

“Thanks.”

Rule book or not, it’s clear that Killian still has old habits to fall back on when it comes to courtly behaviour. He bows, smiles, and makes small talk like he was born to it. It takes a while for her to notice the cracks. She knows that he doesn’t like the court, though he enjoys the dancing almost more than she does. He flat-out refuses to dress in the usual noble finery—his long-harboured grudge against royalty tempered, but not quite overcome.

(Emma can’t blame him. She knows all too well that some scars linger. To this day, she refuses to wear anything bottle green because that was the colour of a sweater she had to wear in the worst group home she was in.)

But overall, he seems to fit in a lot better than she does. Even if he can’t always follow the etiquette he learned by heart, because the hook makes holding a fork quite impossible.

But the court is a snake pit. And appearances deceive.

“Ah!” one of the gentlemen, Sir Percival, exclaims as the main course is served. “Wyvern steak. Have you sampled that before, Captain?”

“A long time ago, aye,” Killian replies. “I’ve all but forgotten.”

“You’re in for a treat,” Percival assures him brightly. “Should you require assistance with the cutting, I’m at your service.”

It’s said so politely that it takes Emma a moment to realise exactly what he just said. Beside her, Killian’s face has gone stony. Only his eyes are alive, glittering with anger and threat.

Emma casts about for something to say—yelling at the guy is definitely not proper etiquette, and she knows there’d be repercussions, but really—

 “Thank you,” Killian says, his voice soft and deadly. “But I’m quite adept at handling a knife.”

Percival is smiling, but his eyes have become nervous, and Emma watches him swallow, and that seems to be the end of it.

But it isn’t the end—it’s just the beginning. And once she starts paying attention, she realises just how deep the rot goes.

The patronising smiles. The subtle, disparaging remarks. She might be an unwed mother, but at least she’s royalty. Killian is not, and while some of the gentlemen appreciate his knowledge of swordsmanship, others resent his mere presence.

She doesn’t realise how bad it is until the ball celebrating midwinter, when she returns from a dance with Robin to find Killian gone.

She tracks him down in the sparring court, shredding one of the straw dummies—not with a sword, but with his hook.

“Killian?”

He stops, arm drooping, shoulders tense. She can’t see him too well in the light from the torches, but she can see, almost feel, the anger in him. “Aye.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing—”

“Don’t say nothing,” she cuts him off. “You just left the—”

He turns, eyebrows up, a fight on his face. “And you’re here to berate me for my rudeness?”

She frowns at him. He’s clearly spoiling for a fight, and normally she’d give him one, but she has learned enough about diplomacy to know that yelling back isn’t always the best idea. “No,” she says. “I’m here to ask you what’s wrong.”

He shakes his head, lips pressed together. “I apologise for leaving without a word. I just needed—I couldn’t—I needed a reprieve from all the nobility scratching each other’s arse.”

She feels her eyes widen. Yes, he’s a pirate and she knows he can curse a blue streak, but he usually uses different words, at least. “Okay, wow.”

“What?” he demands, almost sneering. “Too crass?”

“For you? Yeah, kinda,” she says, caught between concern and her own temper responding to his. “Seriously, Killian, what’s going on?”

She can see his jaw clench in the torch light, but he doesn’t speak.

“If you didn’t wanna dance with me, you could’ve just said,” she says, trying to draw him out.

“Bloody hell, Swan, of course I—it isn’t about you,” he bursts out.

“I didn’t mean—what is it about?” she asks, feeling her patience drain away and wishing it wouldn’t. Wishing she knew whether she should just leave him to his thoughts until he calms down, or whether he needs her here. She knows all too well that belligerence doesn’t always mean a desire to be alone. Sometimes, it means the opposite.

She just wishes she knew what he needs right now. And—shouldn’t she know? He always seems to know what she needs. Is she not paying enough attention?

Is she just not good at this?

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, and takes a deep breath, and the anger dies. “It’s fine. I’m sorry. Let’s go back inside.”

Emma can see the lie in him—he’s not fine. It does matter.

She looks at the shredded dummy, and she thinks that maybe, she understands that part. He was angry, and so he left, to take his anger out on something that won’t be hurt by it.

What she doesn’t know is why.

“Nope,” she says. “I’m not going anywhere. Come on, Killian, I know you. Would you let me off the hook if I was out here shredding straw men?”

She didn’t mean to make the pun, but it makes him laugh—a sharp guffaw utterly devoid of humour. “Ah, that’s it, isn’t it?” he asks, voice sharp and angry and somehow shattered. “You know, I know what they say about me. I know what they mean by the looks, and the smiles, and the comments.  I may not be noble-born, but I’m not stupid.”

“What?” She has a feeling that she knows. It’s not like she’s blind to the looks, either. But she can’t help thinking like he’s noticed more of it than she does.

And he seems to notice. “You’ve picked up on it, surely? The pirate thing? Hardly a fitting consort for a princess, after all.”

“Is that what’s bothering you?”

“It’s insulting!” he bursts out. “It’s demeaning, to suggest that you would agree to a bargain like that, or that your parents would—”

“Wait, whoah,” Emma cuts him off. “Bargain?”

He pauses, then scoffs another laugh-that’s-not-a-laugh. “Oh, aye. Didn’t you know? You were sold to me. In return for my ill-begotten riches, to rebuild your parents’ kingdom. Or perhaps it was payment for some other debt, some deal with the devil that your father made years ago. We don’t seem to be sure on that account.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Even as she says it, it makes a horrible kind of sense. She’s got a kid, after all. She’s damaged goods. By local logic, her parents can’t marry her off for the sake of an alliance, so...

“No, _that_ is the only possible explanation why you’d waste your time with me,” Killian says, and Emma hates the tone of his voice, the raw derision in it, the way it sounds somehow broken. “A scoundrel is one thing, but a scoundrel with one hand can hardly pl—well.”

He cuts off abruptly—so much so that Emma knows that he’s just hit the real issue, and doesn’t want to go there. “Like I said. It’s insulting. And there’s only so much of it I can take before—”

“Right,” she says, and her heart might be breaking a little, because it’s not about stupid court gossip. She couldn’t care less what some of Camelot’s nobles think of their relationship, because she knows that there will always be naysayers no matter what. But this— _this_ has hit a nerve. The same nerve that had him making a deal with Rumplestiltskin in order to get his hand back.

The same nerve she’s hit before, back when she was more concerned with shielding her heart than how he felt.

And suddenly, some of the looks she’s gotten make a different kind of sense, too.

_A scoundrel with one hand can hardly please a woman._

Normally, she knows, he’d have a quip for that, too. He’s all swagger and bravado, and he’d find a way to shut them up. But he hasn’t, and she knows why: she hasn’t exactly advertised their relationship, and he won’t kiss and tell and embarrass her in public.

“Well, _that’s_ the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” she says. She reaches for him, wrapping her fingers around his hook and stepping into his space. “I mean... as if you could afford me.”

He laughs, almost against his will. “Aye. You _are_ priceless.”

She swallows. “So are you.”

He starts to shake his head, eyes flitting away. For a guy who spends so much time complimenting himself, he’s incredibly bad at accepting it from her. Not that, she thinks with a flash of guilt, she’s really given him much practice.

She pulls him into a hug and tucks her head under his chin. “I mean it. You’re...” She’s bad at this. There don’t seem to be any words. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Emma...” That’s all he says. Just her name, breathed over the top of her head, like a prayer.

She wants more words. She wants to tell him that she doesn’t care about the hook, except she does, because it’s part of him, and she doesn’t know how to say that without him getting the wrong idea. She wants to tell him that he matters in a way that he’ll believe it. She wants to kiss him senseless until he forgets about the snake pit.

That last one, at least, she can do. She pulls back just enough so she can tilt her head up, stand on her toes, and catch his lips with hers. He kisses her back at once, like he can’t _not_ , his arms around her and pressing closer.

Heat rises inside her and everything in her wants to savour it, draw out the moments until it ends, but she makes herself let him go. When she pulls away with one last peck, he chases her lips to steal another, and she can’t help grinning at him. _Pirate._

“Let’s go back in there,” she says. “One dance, and then we’ll leave, and you can take me to bed and we’ll just stay there until, like, lunchtime.”

He raises his eyebrows, eyes darkening even as he laughs. “Hmm. I think the people might talk if we did that.”

“Yeah?” Emma brushes a hand over his cheek, still grinning. “Talk about what?”

 He chuckles, then sobers. “Emma. It’s only gossip. It doesn’t bother me if you don’t find it insulting.”

He won’t admit that the comments about his hand bother him, anymore than she’ll admit that jokes about foster kids bother her. And he’s not a kid, or an invalid. He’s a man who lost a hand, and has learned to live with it. She might not always know what to say, but she knows that much.

Words tend to seem kind of empty, anyway.

(Even though she’s definitely going to take the next damn opportunity to let anyone who cares to listen know that, actually, Killian is a lot better with one hand than any other guy she’s known with two. That’s just the truth.)

“I know,” she says. “But I really don’t want to stay in there any longer than I have to, and I _do_ want to get you naked.”

He tsks, leaning back into her, his eyes intent on hers, dark and glinting. “You’re getting very forward, love. It’s quite scandalous. One might think you kept company with scoundrels and rogues.”

 “Just the one,” she assures him, trying to ignore the shiver that wants to run through her at his tone. Yeah, one dance is about all she’s going to manage. One dance is already sounding torturously long.

He makes a sound halfway between a moan and a growl, and kisses her again.

His hair is a little mussed when they make it back to the hall. Her hair has come loose from the braid that’s wrapped around her head, and her cheeks feel very warm. The dance is, indeed, torturously long.

The rest of the night is long, too, but a hell of a lot more enjoyable.

Emma arrives in the kitchen the next morning tousle-haired and wearing Killian’s shirt, pilfering some pastries and fruit to take back to the room. Killian is awake by the time she gets back, and he doesn’t seem to have found his words yet, but he definitely likes the sight she makes.

They barely make it to lunch.


End file.
